Salvaging a print

[GregValiant 983]

I've been intrigued with saving a print-gone-wrong since I started using the Ender last December.  Right away I came across M27 and M26 that use the Byte Offset of the print position in a file.  I got Micorsoft Excel to talk to the printer and by crunching a gcode file with some Visual Basic macros, I figured it out. 

 

I started printing Mrs. Rabbit as a conventional slice with infill and wondered what would happen in Vase mode.  So I aborted the print and had Excel send an M27 to get the byte offset and then the XYZE locations, sliced the Jessica file in vase mode and was able to justify the byte location within the new file, used M26 to jump to the byte offset in the new file and used a G92 to synchronize the extruder, and regular G moves to get the XYZ synced in and it worked very well.  Off course she has some.......interesting.......horizontal parts that don't do well in vase mode, but what the heck.  An experiment is an experiment.

 

She would be impossible to print completely in vase mode since the model is standing on a flat raised dais.  The file with infill handled the platform (and part of her feet) as you can see in the second image.  The last image shows the area of the seam from the other side and not backlit.  Even with the print in my hand I can't tell exactly where one file stops and the other starts.

 

I am officially pleased with myself for figuring this out (even if I do feel a bit like Igor).  Mrs. Rabbit appears courtesy of Thing-i-verse and she will be on a pedestal that proclaims "I'm not bad.  I'm just drawn that way."